Ripdivot wrote:Thanks for your response Jimi, and no you certainly do not suck! I would be very interested to see what your thoughts are if you try a 5k6 in place of the 8k2? I do leave the fuzz pot full up on mine and control it from the guitar. I find with the 5k6 the cleans are cleaner but there is a big difference between 10 and 7 on the guitar volume pot. I use a full sized pot for the 10k to be able to control it at any time, I'm not a fan of trimmers inside either...
i did mess with the biasing like that, and have build most of the fuzzes in the past with a 10k pot (as big as 50k with some transistors) instead of the 8.2k, and yeah, it can work fine. but when i was dicking around, i was looking to make the circuit as small as possible on vero. i could get it even smaller on perf, but cuzza that i wanted fixed resistors. so i tried the stock fuzzface values... and it came to life.
a higher voltage there, like with a kk6 would definitely make it cleaner louder and more overdrivey. you can dial it in beautifully for a lot of sounds that work great for sure.
i think the key is floating the transistor... by adding a SMALL resistance to the e to ground, you can limit the gain somewhat. i suspect there's something to do with ohm's law and the increased resistance of the transistor, but i havent figured it out yet. it has to do something ... but anyways, a small resistance e to ground, not as big as usually suggested makes a difference. like i think i said originally, this is for q's with an hfE of around 215... so 220r and 47 r work real well. if i was using 3904s which seem to float around 360-400, i'd go 470r and 100r. 5088 or whatever, 1k, 220 r or 330r... it seems that as you increase the e resistor, it decreases the gain at a rather predictable amount. but then you kinda HAVE to mess with the c resistors to get it to react right. it's almost like the e resistor affects how much balls, and the c resistor affects the sensitivity of it.
but yeah, anyways, back to point, yeah, 5.6k is valid, 10k, whatever makes it sound the way you like. with the particular q's i used, and because they were so consistent in the bag, i found 8.2k worked perfect and consistently as the stock value so i went with that. something about the added resistance of the transistor... and i know i've read about this shit but can't quite remember (been kinda outta it since that stroke thang last year)... is what lets ya set the gain that's unuseable to a useful one. i wish i knew enough theory to understand it, it just works.
so my boards fit pretty much on a vero 8 rows down by 9 holes long. there's like, 15? 16? wires coming off it. fitting it in a 1590 is hard!
so yeah, 5.6k is perfect probably for your transistors. i like having the extra pot sometimes too. i may add a starve control to one too... these do sound different a little on batery than power supply, but it's pretty close.
i did 6 hours in a local studio yesterday, playing country blues punk psychedelic shit for a local artist's live video shoot.
i turned it full blast. photon face side. used a suzy q overdrive (one of mine, look it up) and as predictable with me, noise reduction (ns2) a pt2399 style echo and one of them behringer digital reverb modelers, the deep blue ones, into my fender pro (late 70's, ultralinear 70 watter into 1 15" jbl d130 with a hammond long decay pan all stuffed in an old vibroverb box), had the volume and master on the amps about half up.
never turned the fuzz off once. played literally all kindsa bizzarre shit and got everything i needed, from uber over picked hyper rockabilly to gilmore style humongous. it feedsback right. for ME to be satisified with a fuckin silicon fuzz face.... lets just say, i am the high priest of the cult of germanium... and i am not wanting for anything at all with this design. the tone is there, most of the interaction is there, not too shrill, cleans up almost identically if a/b'd... man, i gotta make a video, but all i got in stock is the tiny one without the second footswitch. fuck it. the ol lady is out. i gotta couple hours. get some coffee grub and funny veggables in me and see if i can't make a stupid pedal trick up. a/b shit back and forth between the originalish germanium DA fuzzface reissue and this silicon thing.
the important thing and the only thing that matters is that if this works for you, i am happy.